Eggplant Alley (9781593731410) (20 page)

“It was awfully nice of Mom and Dad to do it,” Roy said. He lay on his back again, bedsprings cheeping, hands behind his head. “Awfully nice.”

“You're lying,” Nicky said, but his pink brain was infected by the crazy idea. Could it be true? Dad was extra friendly with Big Nick. That was true. Whenever Dad saw the janitor, he'd say, “Hey, Big Nick, how's business?” And Big Nick would smile and say, “Oh, just great. I'm cleaning up.” It was their little joke. Now Nicky wondered: Why was Dad so friendly with a black fellow who pushed a broom? Why? Why?

“Wait a minute,” Nicky said. “I'm white.” He held up his arm
into the dim light from the courtyard. “Big Nick is colored. I'm white. You lie like a rug. I ain't stupid.”

Roy chuckled softly and said, “You don't know anything, do you? Of course you're white NOW. All kids are born white. Colored kids don't turn black until they're about six or seven. You didn't know that? It's like a Dalmatian getting its spots.”

Nicky wrinkled his brow. Could it be true? He was confused. The awful notion wormed into his head. It was the kind of farfetched idea that could take hold in the middle of the night and become rock-solid truth.

“Wait,” Nicky said. “You lie. I'm telling Mom. I've seen black babies on the bus. Little babies. You're lying.”

“Well, they must have been born in Africa,” Roy said calmly. “American black babies don't turn dark until they're six or seven. It has something to do with less sunshine here. You don't know nothing, do you? Say, how old are you anyhow?”

“Five years and three months.”

“Oh, in that case, don't worry about it. You still have another year before Mom and Dad have to give you back. That was the deal. As soon as you turn, you're going back to Big Nick and Mrs. Big Nick. No blacks live in Eggplant Alley, after all.”

“You're lying. I'm telling.”

“Mom and Dad will deny it,” Roy said, yawning for effect. “Of course. They don't wanna scare you. Well, anyway, just thought you should know. Now go to sleep. Good night.”

“You're lying.”

“Good night, Nick Junior.”

“You're lying.”

Roy didn't answer.

And in the quiet and dark, Nicky reached the awful conclusion that his big brother spoke the truth. Nicky believed every word. It swept over him like a revelation, like the moment he finally nailed down the alphabet. The story made sense. Nicky didn't want to believe it, but the more he fought believing it, the more he believed it. He had no choice.

He had to face facts. It was true. He was a little black boy.

He would miss Mom and Dad and Roy. He wondered if he would be allowed to visit them. Probably not. He imagined walking through Eggplant Alley, and everyone staring at his black face, slamming their doors, clutching their purses close to their coats, hurrying their children along, fleeing the pint-sized black-faced invader.

Nicky passed the next day moping around the apartment. He hoped to forget the entire Nick Junior story. He hoped the whole matter would simply slip his mind. And naturally the more he hoped to forget, the more he remembered.

When Mom took him grocery shopping after noon, Nicky thought Mrs. Capicola shot him a queer look on the elevator. Nicky thought, “She probably noticed my dark arms.”

And at the store, Mrs. Lombardo followed him, aisle-to-aisle, watching with squinty eyes. Nicky imagined he must be turning black, fast, the process quickened by stress. He angled his face to catch his reflection in the chrome edging of the meat counter. No doubt about it. He was much blacker. Mr. Misener would probably order him out of Eggplant Alley, tomorrow if not sooner.

Nicky thought, “What if I refuse to go?”

Nicky imagined torch-carrying mobs coming for him.

Late that afternoon, Roy and his friends played their daily game of stickball. Nicky sat at the kitchen window and watched the big boys play. He listened to their happy shouts and the thwock of the ball and the clatter of the bat.

“Why the long face?” Mom said.

Nicky shrugged.

“Because they won't let you play? You'll play in a few years. When you're old enough.”

“No! I'll NEVER play! NEVER! NEVER! And you know it! I know you know it!” Nicky howled.

Mom took his temperature. Normal.

Mom studied Nicky's face.

“I know what's going on,” she said. “You might as well talk to me about it.”

Nicky sniffed, “Okay.” Through a fit of hiccups, the kind that follow a hard cry, he related the Nick Junior story, as told by Roy.

“What's the matter with you?” she said. “How could you believe that?”

Nicky shrugged.

Mom patted his head and moved around the table to the kitchen window. Mom leaned out and bellowed operatically: “Roy MARTIN-EEE! Roy MARTIN-EEE! Get UP here!”

In a minute, Roy clomped through the door, sweating and grumbling.

“Ma, I was in the middle of a game.”

Then Roy saw the wooden mixing spoon, Mom's favored weapon for special punishments, which she handled like an expert.

“Tell Nicky the truth,” Mom said, shaking the spoon. “Make sure he believes it.”

Roy admitted in a bored monotone that the Nick Junior story was a hoax. Roy promised he was telling the truth.

“May lightning strike me,” Roy said

“I don't believe you.”

“May lightning strike Checkers.”

Nicky believed him.

“Very interesting,” Lester said, giggling so that his shoulders trembled. He buried his face in his arms. He looked with disbelief at Nicky and bit his lip. He slowly shook his head. “How could you have been so … stupid?”

Nicky shrugged. “But I was right, wasn't I? I know what it's like to be black in Eggplant Alley. Sort of.”

“I guess you do,” Lester said. “So tell me, Nick Junior, how did it feel? Creepy and scary?”

“Plenty.”

Lester smirked. “I can only imagine.”

“Hey, you keep sitting in the sun and darkening up, and you'll know,” Nicky said.

Lester looked at his arms. They were nicely tanned. “My mama burns in the sun. I get this from my daddy,” Lester said. “He's half Italian. My grammy was a Campanella.”

“Italian? No fooling? You never said that before.”

Lester shrugged. “I didn't think it mattered.”

I
t was still raining hard the next morning when Nicky and Lester returned to the doorway. They cradled the stickball bat and the gloves and the Spaldeens. The rain quickened. Mr. Cradewlewksi squeezed past them and made the usual joke about building an ark.

Nicky and Lester camped on the damp step until the air raid siren sounded at noon. They went upstairs to Nicky's apartment for peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, prepared by Mom.

“You boys plan to stare at the rain all day?” Mom said.

“The rain will stop after lunch,” Lester said, cheeks puffed by sandwich.

“It has to stop sometime,” Nicky said, sipping Kool-Aid.

The rain strummed against the kitchen window. Mom said, “Wait up here until it clears. Why sit down there and watch it rain?”

Nicky said, “It makes us feel like we're doing something about it.”

After lunch, Nicky and Lester returned to the doorway. They looked out at the courtyard. They tried to make rings with their breath in the damp air. The rain continued. Mr. Misener came along and eyed the bats and gloves. He reminded the boys that ballplaying was prohibited in the courtyard.

“Not that it's ever gonna stop raining enough for fun and games,” Mr. Misener said, squinting at the black sky.

“The rain will stop,” Nicky said.

“It will,” Lester said.

Mr. Misener growled, “I think we're gonna hafta build an ark.”

Nicky and Lester gave up at four thirty.

The boys shuffled, defeated and damp, into the lobby. They waited for the elevator. They were two downtrodden boys. They silently boarded the smelly elevator. The door was closing when a black lacquered cane clacked into the opening. The door stopped, shuddered, crackled, and reversed course. Into the elevator stepped old Professor Smith.

The Professor was tall, thin, and white-haired. He wore a suit and bow tie. Professor Smith lived on the sixth floor. He was widely known around Eggplant Alley as a retired professor of philosophy from New York University and a world traveler.

The elevator shuddered and lifted. The Professor's watery eyes regarded Lester and Nicky. He said loftily, “Good evening, gentleman. Quite the rain out there. But we can use it. Did you know that our average precipitation is down twenty-six percent over the last decade?” The Professor was a talker, whether you talked back or not.

“I didn't know that,” Nicky mumbled.

“Very interesting,” Lester said.

The elevator made a screeching noise. It shuddered, jerked, moaned. The elevator stopped dead between the first and second floors.

“A malfunction,” the Professor declared. “We'll be under way in a trice.”

The Professor squinted down his nose at Lester.

“You're one of the new ones, aren't you?” he said.

“Yes, sir. I moved here in the spring.”

“One of the newer new ones. Smith is my moniker. Welcome to Hudson View Gardens.”

“Thank you,” Lester said. Then to Nicky, “I thought nobody called it that anymore.”

The Professor said, “The old breed called it that, and I'm the last of the old breed. Do you know how the name
Eggplant Alley
originated?”

“Is this thing ever going to start going?” Nicky said.

“I'll be glad to tell you,” the Professor continued. “After the war, the new people began to move in. Fresh faces. Shiny faces! The Capicolas, the McCarthys, the O'Haras, the Moscowitzes, and the like. The old breed moved out. The Van Slykes, the Grants, the Browns. They packed up and ran like the flood was coming.”

The Professor laughed heartily, showing crooked teeth. He went on, “At any rate, it was about that time when the vegetable cart started making the rounds around back. On Groton Avenue.”

“I hope somebody calls the fire department,” Nicky said.

“No need,” said the Professor, waving the cane. “The vegetable cart was operated by an old Italian gentleman with an old nag of a horse. The horse would come clip-clopping down Groton Avenue in the morning. Pulling this vegetable cart. And that lovely old Italian gentleman would sing out his specialties of the day.”

In the tiny box of the elevator car, the Professor bellowed, “STRAW-berries! STRAW-berries. PEACH-es. PEACH-es. EGG-A-plant. EGG-A-plant.”

Nicky and Lester cringed.

“Now, old man Davidson, who lived right here on the second floor, he liked to take his tea in his kitchen every morning. His table overlooked Groton. Which was once a fine tree-lined avenue, by the way. Any-who, to be frank, Davidson didn't care for the new people. He was suspicious of them. Around that time, our milk bottles began to disappear from our doorsteps. The milkman refused to come here for a time, did you know that?

“Any-who, old Davidson called a meeting of the Hudson View Gardens Residents Association. He demanded the vegetable man be banned from making his rounds on Groton Avenue. Well, of course, we could do no such thing! We had no jurisdiction over commerce on Groton Avenue. We made that clear to old man Davidson. I told Davidson, ‘We can't do it, sir. Besides, put yourself in their shoes, man. They need their eggplant!'”

Professor Smith smiled at the memory. He continued, “Davidson, who did not share my populist bent, jumped to his feet and he declared, ‘Well, then I will be moving from here as soon as I can make arrangements. I for one don't wish to live in Eggplant Alley.' Lo and behold, the name stuck. And Eggplant Alley soldiered forth, frothing with fresh blood. Frothing—my, I like that word.”

All this while Nicky toed the elevator floor and Lester stared, eyes bugging out behind his glasses, at the Professor.

“Very interesting,” Lester said.

The elevator thumped and lurched. From the shaft came a screech, a hum, a disturbing clunk. The elevator shuddered and resumed climbing.

The Professor said, “Say. Look.” He nodded toward the floor near Lester's sneakers, where a cockroach crawled with purpose.

“Ewww,” Lester said, and stepped back.

The cockroach stopped, tested the air with quivery antennae, and moved steadily onward.

“Oh, they're harmless.
Blatella germanica
. This area was infested by them after they opened the reservoir. Fascinating creatures.”

Nicky stepped out of the cockroach's path. Bronx cockroaches were known to crawl up pant legs.

“Resilient. We poison them, trap them, starve them. If there's no food, they'll eat paper, leather, anything. Have you seen these new contraptions, the Roach Motels? The bugs will always triumph. They survive, ad infinitum. They'll likely be the only ones left after the atomic attack. Imagine.”

The cockroach made a left turn toward Nicky, attracted to his soppy sneakers. Nicky stomped the cockroach, hard enough to sway the elevator.

“Careful, boy. You'll send us plummeting to the basement,” the Professor said. “Of course, your cockroach friend would survive the fall. We would not.”

Nicky lifted his foot. Out from under his sneaker limped the cockroach, wrinkled and missing an antenna.

“See! Exactly my point. Resilient!” the Professor said.

The elevator stopped, jerking hard, on five.

Nicky and Lester stepped off the elevator.

“We could learn a lot from these little creatures,” the Professor declared, waving the cane as the door closed and the elevator carried him away.

“What a bag of wind. I'll bet he's still talking in there,” Nicky said. “Makes you wonder why anybody would pay good money to go to college.”